US Consulate killings trial: Killers benefited by testifying

The lawyer for an alleged Barrio Azteca gang leader criticized the government's use of cash, legal immigrant status, reduced sentences and other incentives for witnesses, including to admitted killers, in order for them to testify in the trial of Arturo "Farmero" Gallegos Castrellon.

During closing arguments Friday, defense lawyer Randolph Ortega said the combined cash payments alone to at least three witnesses amounted to nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Gallegos, who faces up to life in prison, pleaded not guilty. The federal jury that sat through the two-week trial returned a guilty verdict Friday on all the counts against him.

REPORTER

Diana Washington Valdez

George C. Harris, a prominent lawyer in San Francisco, said in a 2000 article for the Pepperdine Law Review, "Testimony for Sale: The Law and Ethics of Snitches and Experts," that "one of every five federal defendants receives a sentencing reduction for 'substantial assistance' to the government, which is just one form of compensation that prosecutors can offer to cooperating witnesses."

"The impact of compensated witnesses on civil and criminal trials is often significant and sometimes pivotal," wrote Harris, who was unavailable for comment late Friday. "Occasionally, it can result in dramatic miscarriages of justice," he said in the law review article.

"While law enforcement hopes that they can prosecute indicted individuals on the evidence gathered by their investigation alone, more frequently than not in organized crime cases, it is necessary to get someone inside the organization to cooperate in order to even get the evidence to indict and proceed to trial," Evans said. "The goal in organized crime cases is to take down the organization. With the advent of transnational crime organizations, the goal has not changed: Take down the organization."

Evans investigated Italian mafias and Mexican drug cartels during his law enforcement career.

"In my experience, organized crime organizations are ruthless and cold-hearted," Evans said. "They rule their members with an iron fist in order to ensure loyalty and a closed mouth. When you can get an inside member to cooperate, it is very common that they want some assurance of their safety and their family's safety."

In the case at hand, the United States has a very compelling interest to bring to justice those who ordered the killing of a consular employee and her spouse, Evans said.

He was referring to Lesley Enriquez Redelfs, who worked at the U.S. Consulate in Juárez, and her husband, Arthur Redelfs, an El Paso County Jail detention officer.

Offering incentives for witnesses to testify "is necessary to break the code of silence ("Omertà" for mafias) that organized crime organizations demand and severely enforce on their members, and, if necessary, on their family," Evans said. "Just within the past week and a half in Italy, there was the tragic story of a hit ordered against a suspected snitch where his grandson (a toddler) was killed in the same hit."

Jordan said Mexican witnesses who saw the late DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena tortured were given witness protection status in the United States to secure their firsthand testimony.

"They testified in court, and helped us to put away several of the conspirators," Jordan said. "Our higher-ups also approved a $50,000 payment to someone who helped bring Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, another conspirator in Kiki's murder, across the border by force. The witnesses who receive some benefit from the government know they cannot afford to lie, or they will be prosecuted for that, in addition to losing whatever benefit they gained."

Camarena, an undercover DEA special agent, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mexico in 1985. Alvarez-Machain was accused of keeping Camarena alive during the torture session. He was returned to Mexico before he could testify.

Evans and Jordan said that cooperating co-conspirators will often be briefed by government investigators for all the intelligence they can provide, not just the information on a single defendant in a trial.

In the case in El Paso, Gallegos was accused of, among other things, conspiring to kill three people with ties to the U.S. Consulate on March 13, 2010, by ordering the hits from gang hit squads. After the victims were identified, the gang realized they had just killed the wrong targets.

Ortega, Gallegos' defense lawyer, said witnesses who are also co-conspirators in the case — Jesus Ernesto "Camello" Chavez Castillo, Miguel "Lentes" Nevarez and Manny "Manolin" Lopez — all admitted sicarios or hit men for the Barrio Azteca gang in Juárez — testified that they cooperated with the government in the hope of getting their life sentences reduced.

"A year of your life is invaluable," Ortega said in court.

Ortega referred to Chavez Castillo and to Nevarez as "serial killers" because they testified that they participated in hit squads or personally killed numerous people between them during the peak of the drug cartel wars in Juárez from 2008-12.

"'Manolin' Lopez already had his sentence reduced from 25 to 12 years," Ortega said. During the trial, it came out that Lopez used to run the Barrio Azteca in El Paso.

Ortega also questioned why the government chose to compensate a Juárez television cameraman (witness "A.W." in court) with legal immigrant status for him and his family, and also paid him $2,000, to show the court his video of the July 15, 2010, car bombing in Juárez in which three people were killed in an attack that authorities attributed to the Barrio Azteca. "He hit the lottery," Ortega said.

Ortega said pictures of dead and mutilated people (victims of "Camello" Chavez Castillo) and the car-bombing video were shown to the jury only for their "shock value."

A government lawyer countered that up until the U.S. trial, the cameraman was never required to testify in open court against a Barrio Azteca suspect.

It was not disclosed during Gallegos' trial whether witnesses receive S-Visas (referred to in legal circles as "snitch visas"), or other types of legal immigrant documents, such as the legal residence card (green card). Not all visas allow the recipient to remain in the United States permanently, and may be revoked at the government's request.

Ernesto Chavez, 77, father of "Camello" Chavez Castillo, testified that he and his wife were relocated to the United States from Juárez and received a combined total of about $92,000 to live on at U.S. taxpayer's expense. The husband and wife were already U.S. legal residents but lived in Juárez for reasons of medical treatment, Chavez testified. The two had been kidnapped.

A radio technician "E.Q," who testified that he installed and monitored hand-held radios for Barrio Azteca and La Linea, the enforcement arm of the Carrillo Fuentes drug cartel, was part of the problem but was not indicted, Ortega said.

As a paid informant for the DEA, "E.Q." was not indicted and received about $125,000 for informing, and he and family members relocated to the United States, Ortega said.

"He went from making $6,000 a year for (the Barrio Azteca) to making $60,000 a year for the DEA," Ortega said.

New identity

The defense lawyer also pointed out that Fernando Carrillo, a government witness who testified that he is related to the Carrillo Fuentes drug-trafficking clan, received a new identity and is free after serving a sentence for drug-trafficking in the United States, Ortega said.

Carrillo testified that he also cooperated in another trial, but the defendant's name in that case was not disclosed.

Ortega said the inducements that the government gave to cooperating convicted criminals amounted to "a little gravy on the government calentada." During the trial, government witnesses said a "calentada with gravy" within the Barrio Azteca gang referred to a severe beating for breaking the gang's rules.

Gualberto "Bird" Marquez, who handled the Barrio Azteca money from extortions and drug trafficking in El Paso, and who also testified that he provided three truckloads of ammunition for his counterparts in Juárez, is also hoping for a reduced sentence, the defense pointed out.

A 19-year-old Juárez resident who was in a car that was wrecked when Arthur Redelfs' white Toyota SUV crashed after the fatal shooting attack in March 2010, also received legal immigrant status in the United States. He testified that he saw the dead couple when he walked over to their vehicle.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Michael Gibson, also in closing arguments, said the inducements offered to Barrio Azteca gang members are necessary in order to elicit insider information about a brutally violent and criminal organization.

Other gang members also can retaliate against witnesses, and the Barrio Azteca gang in particular has a code that prohibits its members from cooperating with law enforcement.

Gibson said that "Camello" Chavez Castillo's wife and daughter were killed in Mexico soon after the Barrio Azteca suspected that he had cooperated, and that the gang was behind his parents' kidnapping.

"Deeds done in hell are seldom witnessed by angels," Gibson said Friday in closing arguments in response to the defense.

In the end, the jurors were not persuaded that witnesses were bought and paid for to convict Gallegos as the defense alleged. They spent only about two hours deliberating before returning the guilty verdict. Like other co-conspirators before him, Gallegos may also have a shot at negotiating his sentence by offering information to the government about the Barrio Azteca gang.

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